


nothing could change what you mean to me

by julyjunejanuary



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Bisexual Lavender Brown, Character Study, F/F, Fluff and Angst, Friends to Lovers, Lavender Brown Lives, ish, platonic handholding
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-03-18
Updated: 2021-03-18
Packaged: 2021-03-19 10:27:46
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,064
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29749125
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/julyjunejanuary/pseuds/julyjunejanuary
Summary: Lavender, moving on after the war, and figuring herself out along the way.--Love seems so big, for being only four letters, and most of the time it feels all itchy and wrong and too early or too late. It's not like that with Parvati - it's perfect, whispered into the crook of her neck, or screamed across over the loud music in the muggle club.
Relationships: Lavender Brown & Seamus Finnigan, Lavender Brown/Original Female Character(s), Lavender Brown/Parvati Patil, Past Lavender Brown/Ernie Macmillan, Past Lavender Brown/Seamus Finnigan, Seamus Finnigan/Dean Thomas, past Lavender Brown/Ron Weasley - Relationship
Kudos: 3





	nothing could change what you mean to me

**Author's Note:**

> So, this was supposed to be a 5+1 fic somehow, but then it managed to turn into this? Yeah, I don't know what happened, but I like it, so.... here?
> 
> The title is from Heaven by Brandi Carlile.

Lavender Brown's first kiss is with Seamus in Third Year, and it doesn't feel wrong, exactly, but it doesn't feel right, either. When he says that maybe they should just stay friends with his nose scrunched up like that she grabs his clammy hand and says, "Yeah, that makes more sense." They still go to the Yule Ball together, but while she goes to comfort Parvati, he goes dancing with Dean, and she thinks, "Yeah, that makes more sense."

* * *

Halfway through Fifth Year, she snogs Ernie Macmillan in the back of the Three Broomsticks, and when he smiles, lopsided, all red lips and mussed hair, she wonders why she'd never noticed him before. That night, she tells Parvati all about it (and Hermione probably hears too, reading her book under the covers). When she asks Parvati why she's never kissed someone and Parvati says _I have_ , hushed like it's something no one else should know. Lavender feels like a lion is growling in her stomach, but that doesn't make sense, because why would she be jealous of Parvati? Lavender wonders, only for a second, and then forgets in the morning, putting it off for later, for when she is older. When she meets Ernie outside the Great Hall, he kisses her once on the cheek and asks her out again. She says of course but her eyes flicker over to where Parvati stands, talking with Hannah Abbott. She shakes herself and her smile tightens, ever so slightly.

"Where to?" He asks, and her only request is that they don't go to Madame Puddifoot's.

* * *

Ron is a surprise, but she thinks she might love him, in the flighty way teenagers love, even if they don't do much but snog. The dorms are always silent because Hermione refuses to talk to her and Parvati is always gone. She asks Professor Trelawney one day what she should do if she loves someone who likes someone else, someone she's friends with, and Trelawney reads her tea leaves and says something that doesn't make much sense. She asks Seamus after and he tells her to _Stick with it!_ but his mind is on Dean and she's not sure he even heard her. She grabs his hand anyways and thinks that maybe she's the one who should be giving the advice.

She doesn't ask Parvati. (But she thinks Parvati would've told her to break it off, and that counts for something, she supposes. So she breaks it off the next day and Hermione starts talking to her again and Parvati returns to her side.)

When they say goodbye at the end of term, Lavender says: _Make sure to write!_ and _See you in September, Parvati._ She doesn't say, _why were you acting weird all year?_ even though she wants to. She thinks she might be a little scared of the answer.

* * *

Lavender spends most of seventh year in a haze. Instead of focusing about crushes and divination, she worries about Seamus and his vast collection of bruises and cuts. She worries about Parvati, who disappears into herself and again and then really disappears with Padma sometime late in February. She goes to the Room of Requirement with Seamus and Ginny Weasley and Neville Longbottom, because it's lonely, being the only one left in her dorm, and she doesn't want to think about Parvati.

(How can she not, with the empty bed sitting next to her, and the Gryffindor scarf left behind?)

((She takes the scarf with her, but she doesn't show it to anyone.))

On the day of the battle, when Harry goes searching for his weird crown thing and Seamus throws himself at Dean, she grabs Parvati tight and holds her close. _I love you,_ she doesn't say, because she doesn't know yet. Instead, she just whispers _I missed you_ and hopes it's enough.

The moment she thinks she's about to die, it's as if everything is suddenly in focus again and she can feel _His_ breath on her throat, and then suddenly everything is dark.

When she wakes once again it's to muffled voices and bright white lights. Seamus is asleep in one chair to her left, his hand in hers, with Dean at his side. Parvati is on her other side, eyes worried and questioning the Healer. She squeezes Seamus' hand and then everyone is piled into the flimsy hospital bed with her.

"How long has it been?" She asks, when they burst apart, limbs all back in the correct positions. Parvati looks at her with tired eyes.

"Only a couple of days."

"And she hasn't slept a wink," Seamus whispers in her ear.

She moves on, ignores the big scars across her face, ignores her parents increasingly worried looks.

she moves into a flat with Seamus, but pretty soon it becomes more of a flat with _SeamusandDean_ , so she travels. She tells herself it's okay, she was feeling antsy anyways.

And then it really is okay, because in America she meets a seer named Sam-Short-for-Samantha with thick brown hair and she wonders and wonders and then she finally realises. Lavender has her first kiss with a girl after Sam reads her tarot cards and pulls the lovers. (She figures it was fitting) She writes a letter to Parvati and a letter to Seamus the next day, and she gets one back from Parvati and a phone call from Seamus. He laughs and laughs, and says it's no wonder we didn't work out.

"Actually," she tells him because she had talked about this with Sam. "I'm bisexual." And he says that Dean is too, and _Maybe you should actually talk to him, Lav, I swear he's not as boring as you think he is_ , She tells Seamus she might, just to make him happy.

Lavender is not sure why, but she's too nervous to open Parvati's letter for almost a week after she gets it. When she does, it seems like just a normal letter until the postscript: a small _congratulations_ that feels like a beginning.

When Lavender looks in the mirror now, her eyes are immediately drawn to scars: red, angry, and unapologetically there. She remembers (and oh, how silly it seems, now) standing almost naked in front of the full-length mirror, examining her body for anything that wasn't in the magazines Parvati got at Hogsmeade. Lavender glances in the mirror now and she only sees a person, a woman—scarred and weary, yes, but isn't that what helps make her Lavender Brown.

(And, well, it doesn't hurt when Sam kisses Lavender like she's the most beautiful person on Earth, pushing thick blonde braids out of the way, and tracing the scars across Lavender's throat with her lips.)

* * *

It's fun with Sam, it's easy, but some little part of Lavender is always telling her it's time to go home. And she knows that Sam has realised this, by the way that she looks at Lavender like she's cataloging and memorizing every part of her, just in case she loses her. Of course, what good would a seer be if she couldn't even predict her own future? It's at the point in time—in this limbo between something like love and something like strangers, that Lavender remembers the old scarf sitting at the bottom of her suitcase, forgotten and never unpacked. She takes it out, traces the threads of red and gold yarn, but then puts it away quickly when it feels too much like cheating. This might be the break, the moment she realises she is going to leave. So.

"I have to go," Lavender says abruptly, one sun-speckled morning.

"I know," Sam replies, understanding, eyes finding the ceiling. She gets up and makes coffee, and Lavender packs her things (she has too much stuff, she was only supposed to stay here for a week). Sam gives her one last kiss goodbye, but it couldn't really be qualified as anything more than a peck. Lavender leaves by Portkey the next day, and she looks back once, twice, before there is the all-too-familiar jerk deep in her gut and London swirls into view.

* * *

Lavender is too nervous to talk to Seamus, so she moves into a muggle flat, with muggle roommates. Seamus managed to track her down anyways, and dragged her to dinner with him and Dean every Friday, and eventually to the bar, and she could see where this was going but she didn't do anything to stop it, so it's her own fault, really, when she finds herself sitting across Parvati at their dingy kitchen table.

"Hello. I didn't know you'd gotten back."

"Is this an interrogation?" Lavender asks nervously, fidgeting with the hem of her dress.

"Maybe. Since when?"

"What?" She's distracted by the way Parvati's glare seems to cut through her. Has she always seemed that intimidating? Lavender wonders, briefly, if Parvati has become a legilimens since she's been gone (her mind catches on the faded memory of Mad-Eye Moody teaching them something about occlumency) and she thinks hard—just for good measure—about how much she's missed her.

"When did you get back?" Parvati leans forward. Lavender traces the knots of wood in the table.

"February."

A sigh, a pointed look at the calendar on the wall (it reads April 18, 1999), and then their eyes meet and Lavender feels vaguely nauseous, because _it wasn't supposed to be like this_.

"Look, I'm just going to go." She starts to stand up when Parvati gabs her arm. She looks like something inside of her has cracked open,letting all the rotten feelings out.

"Merlin, Lav, you can't just, just run away from everything!" Parvati says.

"Is that what you think I was doing?" Lavender asks quietly. She pulls her arm out of Parvati's grip, drops her head in her hands, and takes a deep breath. "Look, maybe I was. Running away. From you, from my parents, from my new ugly scars that instantly make people think _DANGER_ in big red letters. And so what? It's not like I have to stay here my whole life. We're not at Hogwarts anymore, gossiping about boys and attached at the hip."

"I know we're not at Hogwarts anymore. And I think you're the only living in the past. It's been almost a year since the war. Stop thinking about your fucking scars, everyone fucking has them." Lavenders eyes widen in surprise. It doesn't seem like Parvati to be this harsh. For the first time since she's been back, she wonders if maybe she shouldn't have left, left others to heal as they please. And she doesn't expect to think that, doesn't expect her mind to take her to that dark place of guilt, so she opens her mouth to say something, anything other than--

"I kept your scarf. The Gryffindor one." And, _look_ Lavender thinks smugly, because now it's Parvati who is struck still, whose eyes wander towards the doorway. Parvati opens her mouth to say something, maybe _you did?_ or _I'm sorry_ or even, _I think I love you_ but she's cut off when Dean chooses that moment to stick his head through the door and say, "Seamus and I were going to get takeaway. Do you want any?"

It isn't until weeks later that Parvati sends a letter, an invitation to coffee and a chat. She accepts, to clear the air because it feels awful, really, they haven't resorted to the silent treatment since they were sixteen.

When she kisses Parvati for the first time, it finally feels right: like all her previous kisses were missing a piece and she's just found it. They're on the couch in her flat and the kettle is whistling, but She thinks of Ernie, and Ron, and laughs. _Merlin,_ she thinks, _I'll have to write extensive apology letters._

 _"_ What is it?" Parvati asks, falling backwards into the couch, and Lavender laughs harder, breathlessly.

"Nothing." She grabs Parvati's hand in her own. "I love you, too." They're both laughing now, and Parvati kisses her again, although it's more teeth than lip.

"Took you long enough, you sod."

(Love seems so big, for being only four letters, and most of the time it feels all itchy and wrong and too early or too late. It's not like that with Parvati - it's perfect, whispered into the crook of her neck, or screamed across over the loud music in the muggle club.)


End file.
